


The Beating Heart of Family

by northernlass49



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1210864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northernlass49/pseuds/northernlass49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon and Sansa discuss how to handle their daughter's revelation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beating Heart of Family

The curse word was loud and guttural and one that Jon had used often in the training yard when an opponent had got the best of him. But it was not a word that he had ever heard from Sansa’s lips. Startled, he rose up from the hearth where he had been adding more wood to the fire to discover the cloak that Sansa had been mending had been thrown to the floor and she was sucking on a finger like a petulant child. After a minute, she withdrew her finger and, satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, picked up the cloak and resumed her sewing with quick stabbing motions. Jon gave the fire a few more pokes to make sure that it was burning steadily before taking his chair next to hers.

“What is wrong, Sansa?” he asked gently.

“You know what is wrong, Jon”, she replied in a monotone voice. She kept her eyes on the task in her lap, refusing to meet his gaze.

He shifted his chair closer to hers and ducked his head to make eye contact with her.

“I know you think she has made a big mistake…” he began.

“A mistake?” interrupted Sansa, her voice rising with emotion. “He’s a musician, Jon…an itinerant musician. What was she thinking?”

She shook her head with disbelief and continued her task. Jon was tempted to say that Lyanna could have made a worse choice, an ax murderer, mayhaps…but thought better of it. Sansa was clearly not in the mood to suffer any of his lame quips. Still, his wife’s irrational attitude towards musicians had always puzzled him. As a child she had listened in rapt attention to any musician that ventured this far north. But at some point in her life, her attitude towards them changed dramatically. He suspected some traumatic event in her life resulted in this antipathy but any attempt to find out details from her was met with stony silence.   
Sansa pushed aside her mending once more with a loud sigh and folded her hands in her lap.

“Mayhaps if we had been as strict with her as we were with the boys then we wouldn’t be faced with this predicament”, she said with a whiff of accusation in her words.

Guilty as charged, thought Jon. He knew that the day Lyanna had been pulled feet first from her mother’s womb that his heart was bound to her forever. After the birth of their four boys, and two subsequent miscarriages, Jon and Sansa had almost given up hope of ever having a daughter. Lyanna was their little miracle. But she was not an easy baby, being more alert and active than any of her brothers had been. She was prone to long bouts of crying in the evenings and wouldn’t latch on properly when put to Sansa’s breast. Sansa, exhausted by the difficult birth and often in tears herself, gave up and left her to the care of a wet nurse.

It had taken a lot of coaxing on Jon’s part to convince Sansa that her daughter really did love her. When he had free time during the day he would often visit the nursery to scoop up his daughter with the announcement that they were going to visit Mama. They would interrupt Sansa’s sewing sessions or barge into the kitchen where Sansa was giving instructions to the kitchen staff. Eventually Lyanna outgrew the crying jags and Sansa gradually bonded with her child due to Jon’s perseverance. His patience was paid off when Lyanna, at the precocious age of nine moons, gurgling excitedly, toddled on her own into her mother’s waiting arms. Sansa was overjoyed.

As Lyanna grew it became apparent that although she was the living embodiment of her beautiful mother with her bright red hair and Tully blue eyes, in spirit she was her namesake reborn. With her fierce determination to keep up with her older brothers, at all costs, she became simultaneously the apple of their eye and the bane of their existence. At least once a day one or all of the boys would have to endure a parental scolding for not being more attentive to their sister’s antics. She always had to ride faster and climb higher than her siblings. Her father, much to the chagrin of her mother, was forced to provide her with weapons training at an early age when she could no longer hide the self-inflicted scrapes, cuts and bruises. She eventually proved to be adept at both sword and bow.

“We raised her to be an independent woman of the north, Sansa”, he replied.”We always let her believe that she had choices in life so we shouldn’t be surprised that she has gone ahead and chosen a husband for herself”.

Sansa glowered at Jon. She understood the rightness of his words but that did nothing to alleviate her feelings of unease. She knew that she wasn’t prepared to have the last of her little birds fly the nest. Torrhen, their oldest son, had been summoned to Kings Landing on his seventh name day to be raised as Daenerys’ and Aegon’s heir, the crown prince of the realm. He had married a Mallister girl and they now had two children of their own that Jon and Sansa rarely saw. Samwell, their second son, joined his brother in Kings Landing a few years later to become part of the guard responsible for the safekeeping of the Crown Prince. Their third son, Robb, had followed in his father’s footsteps and was now serving in the Night’s Watch. And Daeron, their youngest son, who was sent to be fostered in Dorne at the age of ten, had decided to stay since he found the warmer climate more agreeable to him than the north. Jon always said that Daeron was always more of a Targaryen than his siblings.

And that left them with the question of Lyanna’s future. Sansa had been delicately negotiating with Willas Tyrell for a match with his youngest son. She had hoped that the boy’s gentle nature would help tame Lyanna’s wilder personality. But now it was all for naught. 

“The man, although penniless, is not without his charms,” remarked Jon. “Mayhaps we can offer to sever some land and build them a holdfast to live in. It would beneficial for Winterfell to have family nearby to help defend it. This would keep Lyanna close to us, Sansa, keep her in the north with us”.

And any future grandchildren, thought Sansa greedily. But there was still uncertainty and disappointment in her eyes. 

Jon took both her hands and grinned at her.

“Please don’t worry, Sansa”, he said reassuringly, “we’ll make sure she never wants for anything. And if he dares hurt her in any way then I can always take his head”.

Sansa withdrew one of her hands and patted his cheek affectionately.

“Oh, Jon, that won’t be necessary”, she replied, “our daughter is more than capable of dispensing her own form of justice”.

Jon chuckled, patted her knee and rose again to stoke the dwindling fire. As he did so he failed to see his wife’s twisted smile and the glint in her eyes.


End file.
